destinyland writes: "We have mimicked how neurons behave in the brain," announces an international research team from Japan and Michigan Tech. They've built an "evolutionary circuit" in a molecular computer that evolves to solve complex problems, and the molecular computer also exhibits brain-like massive parallel processing. "The neat part is, approximately 300 molecules talk with each other at a time during information processing," says physicist Ranjit Pati of Michigan Tech. When viewed with a scanning tunneling microscope, the evolving patterns bear an uncanny resemblance to the human brain as seen by a Functional MRI. Using the electrically-charged tip of a tunneling microscope, they've individually set molecules to a desired state, essentially writing data to the system. And while conventional computers are typically built using two-state (0, 1) transistors, the molecular layer is built using a hexagonal molecule, and can switch among four conducting states — 0, 1, 2 and 3, suggesting it may ultimately have more AI potential than quantum computing.

The computer is only as good as the programmer. I just wish people would walk away from technology at times. Seriously, how far do you want this to go? I do not know about you, but giving away MANUAL control of situations is dangerous. Do you really want a Brain Computer embedded chip to wipe your arsehole when you take a crap? What if it gets the co-ordinates wrong? I cannot wait to see the malware evolve. Darwin would be laughing his tits off!

What they're trying to do is to construct intelligent machines.If at some point these intelligent machines will kill all human beings, they will still be our "children", because they will be built with us as models. I don't want to die either, but evolution refers to survival of the fittest, not survival of the human.